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A review by csquared85
Friendship by Emily Gould
3.0
I felt like this book was a little too slim. We see Amy and Bev hit different rough patches and learn to "grow up", but I didn't feel like I got to know either of them well enough to make it meaningful. They felt familiar to me, though, as they should: Amy, all clueless, thoughtless entitlement because she's been able to coast through life and Bev, so beaten down by so many years of not fitting in that she often sells herself short. Sally feels like an afterthought, a throwaway deus ex machina of a character. We don't spend anywhere near enough time with her to make her feel like anything other than a convenient plot point.
It's very realistic how their friendship evolves and warps with the changes in their circumstances. It happens to us all at this age, I think. Some people are hitting the fast track with marriage and babies and mortgages while others are stuck in neutral with low-paying jobs or crummy casual relationships or grad school (or all three), and when you're at a different stage in the game than your friend, you just don't fit together as well anymore. While you can deny that this shift is happening for a while, eventually you pull away (at least a little).
This book nails that queasy feeling of tugging the parachute cord to discover nothing happens: there's nothing else that can save you from free-fall but your own ingenuity. Some people fall harder than others and some people bounce back quicker, as Bev and Amy illustrate.
It's very realistic how their friendship evolves and warps with the changes in their circumstances. It happens to us all at this age, I think. Some people are hitting the fast track with marriage and babies and mortgages while others are stuck in neutral with low-paying jobs or crummy casual relationships or grad school (or all three), and when you're at a different stage in the game than your friend, you just don't fit together as well anymore. While you can deny that this shift is happening for a while, eventually you pull away (at least a little).
This book nails that queasy feeling of tugging the parachute cord to discover nothing happens: there's nothing else that can save you from free-fall but your own ingenuity. Some people fall harder than others and some people bounce back quicker, as Bev and Amy illustrate.